The Lexis and Lexicogrammar of Sri Lankan English

This book offers the first in-depth corpus-based description of written Sri Lankan English. In comparison to British and Indian English, lexical and lexicogrammatical features of Sri Lankan English are analysed in a complex corpus environment comprising data from the respective components of the International Corpus of English, newspapers and online sources to explore the status of Sri Lankan English as a variety in its own right. The evolution of Sri Lankan English is depicted against the background of historical as well as sociolinguistic considerations and allows deriving a fine-grained model of the emergence of distinctive structural profiles of postcolonial Englishes developing in a multitude of norm orientations. This book is highly relevant to readers interested in Sri Lankan English and South Asian Englishes. It also offers more general sociolinguistic perspectives on the dynamics of postcolonial Englishes world-wide and on the inextricable link between language and identity.

Chapter 6. A model of (the emergence of) distinctive structural profiles of semiautonomous varieties of English

205–224

References

225–232

Appendix

233–244

Index

245–248

“This first book-length study of acrolectal English in Sri Lanka taps into a wealth of electronic corpora and databases for an in-depth description of lexical and lexico-grammatical features of this semi-autonomous variety of English. It is a very welcome addition to the growing body of literature on (South) Asian Englishes and the discussions about norm developments, standardization and nativisation.”

Marianne Hundt, University of Zürich

“Sri Lankan English claims its place in the World Englishes arena: a thorough, richly corpus-based study of the evolution and distinctive properties of this hitherto underresearched variety, profiled in its South Asian context, with theoretically attractive insights into the emergence process of semiautonomous varieties.”

Edgar W. Schneider, University of Regensburg

“This volume makes an excellent contribution to the study of Asian Englishes, from both a sociolinguistic and corpus linguistic perspective. The empirical research for this study is meticulously done, and is complemented by insightful and nuanced analysis, while the volume also serves as an excellent introduction to the sociolinguistics of English in contemporary Sri Lanka. It is highly recommended to all those interested in corpus linguistics, Asian Englishes and world Englishes.”

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Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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